


Memories That We Made Will Never Change

by Houseofmalfoy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cheating, Death Eaters, F/M, Infidelity, Narcissa Black Malfoy-centric, Second War with Voldemort, TasteofSmut 2020, Touch, sight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:40:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25144801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Houseofmalfoy/pseuds/Houseofmalfoy
Summary: They fell in love in the midst of the first wizarding war, and when he went to Azkaban she moved on with her life and her family. Now he's back, and the memories and regret that Rabastan Lestrange brings up in her are stronger than ever.
Relationships: Rabastan Lestrange/Narcissa Black Malfoy
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11
Collections: Taste of Smut Fest





	Memories That We Made Will Never Change

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to Stonecoldhedwig and Yesperfahey for beta'ing this piece, and to the mods of the Taste of Smut fest for organising this fest! I had a great time writing this, so thank you!

"Why the fuck does this still matter to you, Cissa?"

Narcissa didn't respond. For a few seconds, she didn’t even bother to look away from her reflection before finally turning to face Bastan. 

The gown she had put on just now reached to the floor, long sleeves draped around her wrists elegantly, covering the bracelet she wore. The bracelet, an inherited piece from Adrastia Lestrange herself, engraved with the dahlias of the Greengrass family, felt important to the outfit; this dress wouldn't do.

"You've never been one to criticize vanity," Narcissa spoke coolly to her friend, or her lover for lack of a better word. She snapped her fingers and commanded Tilpy to bring her a cerulean blue set of robes. It would match her eyes, and if she recalled them correctly, they would not be long-sleeved.

Behind her, Rabastan scoffed. 

He was seated in an armchair in Malfoy Manor's master bedroom, one leg thrown over the armrest of it in a boyishly-languid position that reminded her painfully of times long gone. Narcissa had expected herself to be relieved to still find resemblance in them to the men — the boys really — that Rabastan and Rodolphus had been so many years ago. She'd been thoroughly let down.

Rabastan's blond hair was matted down, beautiful still, but far from what it had once been, and it looked awfully similar to what happened to Draco's hair if he used the wrong hair potion. His once lively blue eyes had, just as her own, dimmed until they showed little other emotion than an exhaustion Narcissa could only hope would fade with time.

He’d always been so beautiful, and though that hadn’t changed much, Rabastan himself had changed drastically enough for her to be unsure of how to act around him. She wasn’t used to second-guessing herself around him anymore, not after knowing him for as long as she had. Not even after so many years apart. 

“I just think there’s better things to do during a war, that’s all.”

Narcissa fixed her updo in the mirror and looked at him with a delicately raised eyebrow. “Yes, your lounging around my manor, drinking my wine and complaining about my peacocks, is far more beneficial to the cause. How silly of me.”

Rabastan rolled his eyes at her, but she caught him grinning when she turned back to the mirror. 

“Don’t tell me you’re not enjoying the view, Bastan,” she tutted at him, then moved behind the screen to undress and change into the cerulean robes Tilpy had brought. 

In another time, in another world, she would have laughed when she heard him mutter under his breath: “A little hard to enjoy it when you’re denying me the actual view,  _ love _ .”

She supposed he made a fair point, but Narcissa had no intention of undressing in front of him for no occasion. There were limits to how far she could bend her propriety. “How hard it must be, being you.”

Narcissa stepped away from the screen, spun around once in the cerulean robes she was now wearing, and then turned to the mirror with a slight smile. 

A fair point, indeed. Narcissa never left the house anymore these days; there was little reason to and it was more dangerous than ever before since Lucius had received his sentence. She had no intention of leaving the Manor’s wards. 

It wasn’t safe within the walls of Malfoy Manor, either, but there was far too little Narcissa was able to do about that. Many of the Death Eaters had not quite been able to return to their previous homes, places under constant watch of the Ministry. Living with them was necessary to the  _ cause _ , but it had been more of a nightmare than Narcissa could ever have imagined.

She was grateful to have her family with her, at the very least; but with the Dark Lord’s presence and the constant meetings and the Order members held captive in her wine cellar, there was little about her beloved Manor that still felt like home.

Narcissa remembered the day she’d first entered Malfoy Manor as its Lady; the day she and Lucius had returned from their honeymoon to Positano, a beautiful village on the Italian coast. She’d entered the manor as Narcissa Adrasteia Malfoy for the first time in her life, and it had almost immediately felt like she’d always been at home there. 

The memory brought a smile to her lips, and when she turned to face Rabastan, he looked up with a raised eyebrow as though he hadn’t been expecting her to look  _ happy _ .

“You’re… gorgeous, Cissa,” Bastan told her, and the sincere admiration that radiated through his exhausted voice touched her more than she had been anticipating. Naturally, that meant he had to go and ruin it with his sense of sarcasm that never rested too far below the surface. “A light in all this darkness, truly.”

“We need some form of joy in this war, don’t we?” she told him coolly, still smiling, though the curl of her mouth had turned more arrogant than genuinely happy. 

That was the main reason she still did this; that she still cared this much about her appearance even when the only people who saw her were her dearest friends and a group of escaped convicts whose opinion of her had ceased to matter the very second they had been locked inside their cells in Azkaban. 

The process of carefully selecting robes and a hairdo, of picking out just the right jewelry to go with it, for no one in particular; it gave Narcissa a sense of stability, the false idea that not everything was lost. It gave her a little more hope. She wasn’t going to stop the war from destroying everything she held dear by putting on her most expensive heels, she wasn’t naive enough to think she had that power. But if she could make herself smile for a moment; if she could make Bastan’s eyes light up when they set sight on her, just by taking the time to look her very best regardless of everything else going on, wasn’t that worth it?

“Well if you’re not going to show off for me  _ without  _ these beautiful robes, love, why not ask my brother to watch? I get he’s busy with the horses, no doubt, I’ve barely seen him around, but it might be his forte, not mine.”

At those words, Narcissa’s smile faltered at once. She looked away from Bastan, a sombre look in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. The brothers must not have spoken much, if Rabastan made that suggestion as lightheartedly as he did. They never had, she supposed, not for many years. 

“He hasn’t asked about them,” Narcissa stated when she caught her lover’s worried look at her sudden change in expression. She could see that though Bastan tried to hide it, he was shocked to hear it. She wouldn’t have expected anything less. 

“What?”

“He has not asked about the horses. Not once.”

Fifteen years ago, it was difficult to have any conversation whatsoever with Rodolphus that did not at one point or another mention the winged horse stables he had inherited from his father. Narcissa and Bastan had both grown up with him and he’d always been so fond of the creatures, much to his parents’ joy. 

They’d often teased him, as children, teenagers, and young adults were expected to do, but truth to be told Narcissa had always enjoyed watching her dearest friend grow so passionate about something he had always been destined for. 

It had shocked her when months passed since their escape from Azkaban, and Rodolphus had not once inquired about what had become of the business, and the horses kept at Lestrange Manor. 

“Fuck,” was all she heard Bastan say, and Narcissa had no other words to describe it. “That’s… fuck.”

“Quite.”

They stared at each other for a moment too long, during which Narcissa even allowed herself to imagine that aside from Rodolphus’ pain, not much had changed. Senseless, truly, but there were senseless things she could not refrain from doing. 

Perhaps Bastan understood. He didn’t say anything. At least not at first. 

“He’s… he’s not okay, is he?”

“None of you are.”

“No, but— ” Bastan didn’t finish his sentence, and Narcissa couldn’t bear to look at him when she answered his question anyway. 

“He’s not.”

Augustus had asked her about the stables, and she’d only been able to briefly tell him that she’d kept them running by hiring the best of the best to do it for her. Even if Narcissa hadn’t expected any of the Lestranges to ever set foot outside of Azkaban again, she had not been able to bring herself to sell the stables.

Too many memories were attached to those horses and that business, stemming from watching Raoul handle the massively winged equines when the three of them had only been six years old, to witnessing first-hand how Rodolphus seemed to light up whenever he was near the horses he kept at the manor itself. 

Narcissa had rarely ever gone to see the horses herself, outside of the occasional trip to the stables in France with Draco when she got the chance, but selling them to the highest bidder as though they were not the last bit of solid memory she had from her childhood friends had never been an option. She’d never expected that now that Rodolphus was out of Azkaban, he would not once think to ask about the one thing she’d always believed to be consistent in him . 

Rodolphus had always been careless, a characteristic of him that she’d once admired more than anything before it had turned from a charming sort of carelessness to being so reckless she could only describe it as self-destructive. He was energetic and passionate and changed his mind and lost his focus as fast as the draught of the living death killed, but the one thing Narcissa had always imagined would never change was the love for horses he’d shared with his father. She wondered if it was naive to hope it would return. 

“He’s not okay, and neither are you,” Narcissa whispered, her eyes narrowed not at Bastan but at her own reflection. She wasn’t sure why this made her angry of all things, but many things did these days; she blamed it on the stress of the war. 

“None of us are okay, so why the fuck do you still waste your time acting as though if you just look  _ beautiful  _ enough, it’ll all be better?”

Narcissa had never quite been able to tell if she hated or loved it when Bastan got angrier with her, but this time she was only annoyed by his insisting that he was right. She ignored him for a moment, focused on readjusting the neckline of her robes, then glanced back at him for only a moment. 

“Do you really think whatever it is you are doing is a more productive way to spend one’s time?”

“Don’t give me that crap.”

Narcissa rolled her eyes. “I merely need one thing, at the very least, to feel somewhat  _ normal,  _ Bastan.”

“Nothing about this is  _ normal _ ,” Bastan snapped, and Narcissa didn’t argue with him. She couldn’t. Even the fact that Rabastan was sitting here, in her chambers in Malfoy Manor, as opposed to within the walls of Azkaban, was not  _ normal _ . 

It wasn’t  _ normal  _ that people she had expected to never see again, people she had weeped for and had grieved, people she had accepted as heartbreaking losses of the war had returned to her, broken and torn apart. It wasn’t  _ normal  _ that after years of praying Lucius’ and her own mistakes would remain in the past where they belonged, their precious boy was paying the price for them. 

“You just worry about your brother,” Narcissa told him instead of saying any of that. “I believe he’s intending to drink himself to death before the Order finds and kills him.”

Bastan tried to laugh, but she knew him too well to miss the concern that rang through what was meant to be a careless sound. He’d never been able to pretend; not with her. 

“I’ll see about Dolphus, though it sounds like he’s got the right idea,” he muttered, and Narcissa hated him for it, hated that she once again had no way of arguing his point. It didn’t matter, either, because Bastan followed it up with a very simple question that made any other thought fall from her mind as though they were nothing. “What about Draco?”

At that, Narcissa felt like she’d frozen in time. 

_ Draco _ . 

Her one and only, her precious little boy. Narcissa knew for a fact that she had never nor would ever love someone as much as she loved her son; her only son. The moment she’d first held him in her arms had, by far, been the happiest in her life. Draco, who’d been thrusted into an unbearable position Narcissa wished so desperately she could shield him from; made to complete a task he was meant to fail, in order to make up for Lucius’ failures. So close to the heat of the war all because she and her husband had been reckless fools at seventeen.

Draco, who was Bastan’s son.

“What about him?”

“My son, Cissa.” Rabastan’s voice was frustrated now, and when Narcissa sat down in her chair and looked at him, she saw him staring at her as if he couldn’t understand what she was saying. “Risking his life for yours because your utter moron of a husband lost to teenagers, because it’s  _ assumed  _ he’s the boy’s dad.” 

Narcissa shook her head. “Lucius— Lucius is his father,” she stated quietly, and though her words were far from convincing, she was, in her opinion, speaking nothing but the truth. “I’m sorry, Bastan. You— you fathered him, and that was my mistake, but you’re not his father.”

The pained look that crossed Rabastan’s face told her all she needed to know; that had hit too close, had been too low of a comment, and she deserved the guilt that came with it.

That did not, however, mean that she had any intention of taking her words back. Harsh as they were, she stood by them. 

Every time she’d been reminded of her son’s biological father, Narcissa had always felt a nearly overwhelming feeling of guilt towards her husband. It was something she’d learned to live with, something she had never told him about for fear that it would shatter his heart. Something she regretted despite how happy she was that Bastan had stayed with her in Draco. 

It wasn’t that she’d been unfaithful to Lucius. Throughout their marriage Narcissa and her husband had never hidden their respective affairs from one another; they had fallen in love throughout the months he’d spent courting her and had never fallen out of it, but their relationship had never been monogamous. 

When it came to Narcissa’s pregnancy, though, it should have been Lucius. Entering her marriage, she hadn’t even been entirely convinced she’d be able to carry a child, and neither had Lucius. As much faith as he’d had in her and their resources, there had been no way of knowing. The magic and the many healer appointments, the rituals and the sleepless nights that it had taken to conceive that first time had been painful and long, and Narcissa’s heart had never quite healed from the soul-crushing pain losing that little girl to a miscarriage had brought them. Ophelia Malfoy, they’d been planning to name her; and she’d been Lucius’ daughter. 

Narcissa would never truly forgive herself from having conceived a second time not with Lucius, but with Bastan; a careless mistake that she never should have made, but that she had no way of undoing because if there was anything she never would have survived, it would be the intentional termination of a pregnancy she’d longed for so badly. 

She’d never seen Lucius as thoroughly happy as he’d been when he’d shown her Draco. After Bastan had disappeared from her life by his own horrific doing, Narcissa had vowed that she’d never let her husband know the truth of Draco’s parentage. If anything, the man who had raised and cared for her son throughout his entire life, who was there through every up and down of parenthood alongside Narcissa; she supposed that made Lucius his true father either way. 

She couldn’t blame Bastan for not agreeing with her. 

“Narcissa you can’t— you can’t fucking deny that  _ I’m _ the father of your son. Have all the regrets about it you want, but I am. Draco’s father isn’t Lucius, it’s me, and he’s out there risking it all because you’ve never told them the truth.” Rabastan snapped at her, and for a moment all Narcissa noticed was that his eyes still darkened to the same shade of blue Rodolphus’ were all the time, when he was angry. 

“In another world, you could have been.”

He looked like he was going to argue again, for just a moment, and it hurt her more than it should have to watch Rabastan give in. He slumped back in his chair, lifting his glass of wine to his lips, and Narcissa wished she didn’t know exactly how broken he was when he muttered his response. 

“That’s bloody useful, isn’t it?”

Narcissa rolled her eyes. 

Ever since Rabastan had returned from Azkaban, she’d not been able to stop herself from imagining a world where everything had been different. She’d have married Bastan, if Adrastia and Raoul Lestrange had never been murdered when they had. Odd as it felt to make that connection, Narcissa knew it to be true. Had Bastan’s parents not been killed, several things would never have happened, all of which contributed to the reason she could not possibly have gotten married to Rabastan Lestrange. 

Rodolphus never would have married her sister, at least not at the time he had. He would have been able to put off marrying for at least another decade, and Narcissa knew him well enough to know for a fact that he would have taken the chance. Her sister not being married to a Lestrange would have opened the family up to Narcissa, as both the Blacks and Lestranges had been expecting for a while. 

If their parents had never been murdered, the Lestrange name would never have taken the hit it had. The brothers never would have joined the Dark Lord, Bella’s madness never would have tainted the name, and neither Rodolphus’ nor Rabastan’ horrible carelessness would have ruined the family reputation. 

Narcissa loved both Bastan and Dolphus with all she had, albeit in wildly different ways, but it would take days to count the ways in which they’d both ruined their lives. It hurt to even acknowledge it.

“Not anymore, it’s not.”

She was being unnecessarily harsh on him, she knew she was, but Narcissa failed to feel any guilt over it at the moment. She’d hated him for years after what he’d done, and though that hatred had simmered down to nothing but disappointment, regret and memories too painful to think about over the years since then, Narcissa had not yet fully forgiven any of them. Throughout the first war she’d been able to condone and overlook more than she perhaps should have, but the Longbottoms had crossed all the lines. She felt sick at the thought. 

“Fuck off, Cissa.”

She ignored him once again. 

Narcissa reached for a necklace she had chosen earlier that morning and, not acknowledging the look of anger on Bastan’s face, turned back to him with a falsely questioning glance. He would not make the fault to mistake her request for anything other than the demand it was. “Would you put it on me, darling?”

“You’re joking.”

“Not in the slightest. I can’t see the lock myself.”

Bastan was just as aware of Tilpy, who despite being an elf was more than capable of putting a simple necklace on Narcissa, as she was, and because of that Narcissa smiled in triumph when he got up from his armchair reluctantly to make his way over to her. He knew what he was getting into, and though his movements were still frustrated, they were careful enough with the priceless necklace; one of the few heirloom pieces from her mother she’d kept. 

Rabastan looked over her shoulder into the mirror and Narcissa stared back with nothing but memories in her eyes. 

Memories of golden evenings with the winged horses at Lestrange Manor, laughing with the boys,  _ her boys _ , until she was doubled over and her stomach hurt; of family brunches with the Lestrange family where it never felt like she was an outsider because she had been a part of their household for as long as she could remember; of late-night conversations with Rodolphus and Rabastan, staying up until they could see the sun coming up again talking of war and family and what the future would have in store for them. 

Her eyes focused on Bastan himself, and only him. 

He was still handsome, though he was still recovering his weight after Azkaban had hollowed him out considerably. His eyes, though not as sparkling with life as they’d once been, were just as easy to get lost in, still looking at their reflection with a curious admiration that she’d adored for years. 

He’d grown older, lines on his face and hands and circles under his eyes that marked the years that had passed and the time he’d spent in what Narcissa could only describe as hell. She hated the reminder of that place in every scar and the prison number tattooed on his neck, but she couldn’t deny that even in his brokenness, time looked good on Rabastan Lestrange. 

That should not have surprised her. 

Rabastan fixed her necklace and his hand traced the golden chain carefully, down to the ornate pendant her mother had once been so proud of. Looking into the mirror, Narcissa followed Bastan’s hand with her eyes as it wandered down her gown slowly. She smirked at their reflection and did not a thing to stop him when he cupped her breast for a moment, and she instinctively moved her head towards him when he leaned in to mutter “I do think this one looks best on you.”

His other hand’s fingers stilled against the skin of her neck, tilting her head towards him by gently pressing against her jaw with insistent touches, and when Narcissa met his eyes she couldn’t help but think of the many times she had before, from this distance, and the many times she’d kissed him right after he’d looked at her like this. 

Bastan beat her to it. 

It was the first time since Azkaban that he’d kissed her and for a moment Narcissa felt as if her heart had stopped, overwhelmed with the sheer realisation that at last she could do this again.

Salazar, she’d missed him. 

Narcissa felt his lips, chapped and scarred and a little dry, move ferociously against her own until there was little she could do but to turn towards him completely and kiss him properly. She cupped his face in her hands and ignored the stubble he’d grown; she wasn’t sure if she should hope it was carelessness or a purposeful decision, she only knew she didn’t find it… desirable. It hardly mattered; she supposed there were more pressing matters to worry about during a war that was sure to ruin them all than Bastan’s five-o-clock shadow. 

“Sit down,” she whispered, and Merlin she could murder him for the way he smirked down at her defiantly. 

“Or what?”

“Don’t play games, darling,” Narcissa hissed, their foreheads still pressed together so their lips were barely apart when they spoke. 

Bastan’s grin only widened. “Sure,” he muttered, then leaned in to pull her bottom lip between his teeth only to take a step back immediately. He did sit back down in his chair, though, and as much as Narcissa wanted to smack him for his behaviour she couldn’t deny how much it turned her on. 

They’d never had an easy time giving in to each other, had they? She supposed she ought to be glad that some things never changed. 

Narcissa sent Tilpy away — through years of having the elf be her personal assistant the stupid thing still had to learn when she was no longer wanted — and stepped out of her heels without looking away from Bastan. 

He really was beautiful.

Narcissa slid herself into Bastan’s lap, smirking down at him when she felt his slightly hardened cock through his robes. Briefly, she wondered how many women he’d slept with since escaping prison, but she wasn’t sure what answer she’d be happy with. So, she pushed the thought from her mind. 

She kissed him again, and where she had been frustrated with him, with the war, with every damned thing around them, she felt herself overwhelmed with a feeling of relaxation the moment she felt familiar hands on her waist and chin; a familiar chuckle when she pushed herself closer to him; a familiar tongue slipping between her lips. 

It had been too long, fifteen years too long, since she’d kissed Rabastan like this. The first time she had, they’d been teenagers: tipsy on wine he’d nicked from the kitchens, experimenting with one another without realising they were falling in love in the process. Many such occasions had followed, not all of which she had been able to remember the next morning. Every single one of them had contributed to the undeniably strong bond she now shared with her lover and childhood best friend, every one of those moments made kissing Rabastan feel like she’d finally come home after a long day out in the snow; warmth and safety and Adrastia’s homemade cocoa awaiting her. 

Narcissa unbuckled Bastan’s belt beneath his robes, undid the clasps of his robes while he was still seated without ever breaking their kiss, and when what had started out an angrily pent-up kiss that had reminded her of the height of the first war turned into slower, more tender kisses; she didn’t know what she’d have loved more. 

Bastan kissed her as if they had all the time in the world and nothing to lose, kissed her as his hands roamed her body, slid the carefully chosen robes off her shoulders and only broke free from her lips to trail tender kisses across her jawline, neck, and collarbones. He kissed her as if there’d never been a time they hadn’t been head over heels in love with one another. As if the time spent in Azkaban, with only the screams of other prisoners to keep him company, had never transpired.

For the time being, Narcissa permitted herself to imagine there never had been such a time indeed. 

Narcissa was lifted off his lap, more awkwardly than he’d perhaps imagined but she hardly cared. Rabastan lifted her up and instinctively she wrapped her legs around his waist, holding onto his body with one arm wrapped around his shoulders. In the back of her mind the thought occurred that, just for a moment, it felt as if they were twenty once more. 

Bastan laid her down on her bed, towered over her before he captured her lips in another simultaneously nostalgic and erotic kiss; as teenagers he’d once bragged that his French roots made him an excellent kisser and, though his skill was certainly up to par, today the memory of that comment made her chuckle against her lover’s lips. 

“Laughing at me?” he muttered, his mouth leaving hers as he took off her robes, using a bit of wandless magic to not force her to get up as he discarded the garments.

“Always, darling,” Narcissa told him, and he laughed at that.

Rabastan undressed himself eagerly and Narcissa would never deny that she thoroughly enjoyed being able to watch him take his clothes off again after so many years. 

His sentence in Azkaban had not been kind to him, and the sight of the many scars covering his naked body were more of a shock to Narcissa than she’d have liked to admit, but it didn’t matter. He was astonishingly handsome, all the same. 

Naked, he joined her on the bed and kissed her deeply, his hands discovering every part of her body that time had altered, though not as drastically as Bastan himself had. He lifted her, made her sit up in his lap once more and Narcissa’s fingers instinctively reached for his hardened cock just as she felt the stubble of his chin against her neck and collarbones. 

At the height of the first war, it had been rare for them to be so tender, so loving with one another. Their relationship had been one of passion and lust and certainly romantic adoration as well, but it had been far less important, or at least they had pretended it was. Narcissa had been married, after all, and her choice to marry Lucius over Rabastan had been a recent one. Any romantic tension that had stirred between them had, other than the occasional outbursts in the form of arguments and furious and regretful love confessions, been pushed to the side for the sake of merely enjoying each other’s bodies. 

She wasn’t complaining that today, Bastan loved her as a husband was expected to. 

With Rabastan’s hand between her legs, his mouth toying with her breasts, and his cock twitching in her hand, Narcissa forgot why on earth they hadn’t done this sooner. She moved against exploring fingers, searching for just the right friction. Narcissa whimpered when she found it, and though he indulged for a moment she felt like smacking him when he stopped his hand almost immediately. He’d always been an arse.

“Don’t make me wait,” Narcissa demanded of him, and she felt Rabastan smirk against her breast as his hand wrapped around the inside of her thigh; felt him graze his teeth across her skin lightly before he kissed it insistently. She wanted him this tender, this gentle with her — war was hard enough for the time being after all — but she would be damned if he drew out this teasing too long. 

His fingers were between her legs once more, teased her entrance for a moment before he pushed two inside her. “Better?” he asked knowingly as she leaned into his hand. 

Bastan’s thumb toyed with her clit, but what drove her was the beckoning gesture his fingers made inside of her, working her up until Narcissa was panting with her lips pressed against his temple as she fucked herself on his hand. She bit her lip, moaning quietly when their eyes met and Rabastan whispered “Fuck, you’re beautiful, Narcissa,” like he was seeing her for the first time. It’d been long enough to make it feel like he was. He kissed her collar bones, bit down in her neck before he licked the mark he’d left and when she moaned, he kissed her again.

With her hands clasped around his neck and shoulders, she pulled him up in a heated kiss. Rabastan ravaged her, properly and thoroughly snogged her, until her lips felt numb and her fingers tingled with arousal. Narcissa moaned into his mouth, desperately trying to get closer to him than it was possible for her be, and between his fingers that had not lost their practiced touch and the threads of saliva dangling between them each time they moved even slightly, Narcissa found herself lost in the familiar bliss that was Rabastan.

She came far faster than she’d expected, breaking their kiss when she tilted her head back and scarcely even registered Bastan going back to leaving wet bite marks on her neck as he continued using his fingers to fuck her through her orgasm. 

Narcissa’s head felt clouded with pleasure and relief when Rabastan pulled out his fingers and gently cupped her cheek, then traced her lips with her own wetness. She smiled, laughed, nearly, at how much a gesture she could only describe as filthy made her feel right at home. 

He kissed her, and while Rabastan gave her the chance to catch her breath he laid her down on her back, sitting on his knees between her legs as he kissed, licked, and sucked both her breasts with the utmost attention. Narcissa could think of no better way than to be treated after already having been provided with an orgasm. 

By the time she’d stopped panting, she felt his erection pressed against the inside of her thigh insistently, and Narcissa couldn’t deny she would not decline a second round. 

Narcissa reached up for Rabastan’s neck, dragging his head down to her so she could kiss him again. Sensual, slow kisses that lit up the fire in her stomach all over again until he pulled away from her lips to focus on the rest of her. 

Bastan’s hands roamed her body, stilled at the stretchmarks that adorned her hips and stomach and for a moment she felt self-conscious. Silly, she supposed, for Rabastan looked at her with every bit the adoration, with just as much reverence as he had from the moment she’d invited him into her rooms. 

“Gorgeous,” he muttered, tracing a scar of which he knew the cause all too well, and when Narcissa whispered  _ old  _ in return, he kissed her deeply. “Looks good on you,” he insisted. 

She leaned back against the pillows, pulling him in with her, kissing back pressingly, one of her hands around the back of his neck as the other traced the scars on his chest with a dark curiosity as to what had caused them within the walls of Azkaban. 

A curiosity she’d gladly never satisfy. 

Rabastan broke away and she dug her nails into his scalp for a moment to show her dissatisfaction, but she was repaid in full when his fingers and then his cock caressed her folds for a few blissful moments before he positioned himself properly. This was what she’d been waiting for, for far too long. 

When he entered her, Narcissa held back a sob– she couldn’t be sure whether it was sensitivity, contentment, or nostalgia. Slowly, Bastan pushed himself inside, pausing to allow her to adjust to being completely filled with him after what she could only describe as having been empty for far too long. 

“I love you,” Narcissa whispered, a whisper that passed her lips so genuinely yet so quietly she wondered if he’d even caught her words as Bastan continued to thrust into her. “I love you. I love you, Bastan.”

“Shut up.”

She laughed silently and moaned before she dragged the nails of one of her hands across his back once more; Rabastan hissed, but when he kissed her neck, then her jaw, and then her lips, he muttered the soft “I love you too,” against her mouth that Narcissa had longed to hear. 

_ Love _ . 

She supposed she’d always been in love with Rabastan, or had been at the very least since the two of them were sixteen. She’d fallen in love with him when she could, when she’d been under the impression that that was what she’d been supposed to do, when she’d believed he was her future. Never had Narcissa expected to end up  _ here _ . 

Here, in the middle of a second war she never would have thought of when she’d fallen in love with Bastan in the heat of the first; here, fifteen years older, scarred and exhausted and terrified for the lives of everyone she loved all over again; here, exchanging declarations of love to drown out the underlying knowledge that they were all doomed from the beginning of this war; here, as Rabastan thrusted into her with a rapidly increasing desperation. 

Narcissa whimpered when he kissed her neck. She tilted her head, biting her lip to hold back her moans as she moved her hips in sync with Bastan. When he grew tired, she had no way to blame him, truly; hollowed out and pale as he still was from his decade and a half in Azkaban. 

Blame him she could not, nor had she any reason to complain because when she whispered “Let me,” and moved them, made him change their position as he bit the lobe of her ear with a grin, Narcissa was rewarded with a sight she’d missed more than she’d expected to. 

Sitting on top of him, her legs clamped against either side of his hips as she picked up their pace again, Rabastan looked like a dream to her. His blond, matted hair pressed to the sides of his face, his skin glistening with sweat that made him look healthier than he had, and his blue eyes looking up at her as though he couldn’t believe she was real; Narcissa had missed that. 

She pretended not to see the tattoo of his prison number, pretended she couldn’t count his ribs beneath his skin, imagined his eyes shined as they once had when they stared up at her like this. Her mind was clouded with pleasure and memories, her vision blurred when her eyes nearly fell shut as she moaned while riding him exactly the way she’d always enjoyed so much; it was almost too easy to pretend. 

Bastan’s hips bucked into her desperately and in the way he squeezed her thighs with a bruisingly strong grip and pressed his head back into the pillows, his eyes closed tightly, Narcissa knew he was close. 

He came almost as soon as she’d thought it, and Narcissa watched him and found herself noticing that his expression when he came hadn’t changed over the years. Rabastan moaned loudly, his seed spilling inside of her as she continued to ride him until she’d pushed herself over the edge of orgasm for the second time that day and she felt his cock grow limp. 

Narcissa moved off of him slowly and laid down beside Bastan, out of breath as she kissed his lips lovingly. He kissed her back, caressed her cheek with a gentle touch that should have comforted her but instead reminded her so starkly of a past she had no way of holding onto but to let the man beside her bring it back that far too sudden she felt her eyes sting. 

“That’s a little insulting, love,” Bastan scoffed with a playful smile that only added to the memory he was creating. He kissed the corner of her mouth, ran his fingers through her hair slowly, and then pulled her smoothly against him; their naked bodies pressed together, Narcissa still holding herself up on one elbow so she looked down at his beautiful face. That damned stubble didn’t bother her as much anymore. 

“I love you,” was all Narcissa could say, and the moment she said it she felt as though she shouldn’t have. Bastan, too, looked a little more alarmed than he had before, and at moments like this she was so glad that he knew her well enough to know when she was close to losing it. 

He’d always known her so well. That knowledge didn’t help her hold it together. 

“I love you,” she repeated with a little more force. “I’m married, and my son,  _ our  _ son,” Narcissa emphasised, and a flash of recognition and hurt crossed Bastan’s face. “Our son is out on this suicide mission, set up to fail in punishment of a man who’s not his father. This war is not one we will win and — ” she stopped, biting her lip when she found herself at a loss of words to describe the hopelessness that threatened to spill over the edges of her normally so collected facade. 

“And when we inevitably lose we will all be doomed; we’re all doomed,” Rabastan continued for her, then paused to take a deep breath. “Which comes to the surprise of no one, because we’ve always been doomed, haven’t we? The lot of us. Doomed, lost cases, hopeless; from the moment we chose this.”

Narcissa closed her eyes as tight as she could manage to keep more tears from spilling down her cheeks, held onto Bastan’s shoulder for dear life as she pressed their foreheads together and pretended not to notice how he was trying not to cry himself. 

_ Doomed _ . 

They’d been doomed from the beginning of this war, and all that drove her forward was the hope she held that perhaps the same could not be said for Draco; all that kept her here was the sheer determination that she would not let happen to Draco what she’d let happen to her boys years back. 

Narcissa could still remember the shock she’d experienced when she’d first seen the Dark Marks on Rabastan and Rodolphus’ pale forearms, the anger and betrayal and fear that had coursed through her veins like the wildest and most dangerous parts of the river she and the boys had spent countless days with nothing but the horses, broomsticks, and each other during summers when everything had still been good. 

The first war had nearly drowned out the memories of those summer days. Memories of sunlight that had coloured Rabastan’s skin a gorgeous shade of gold; of the way his eyes had never stopped glittering even after the sun had gone down because nothing had given his spirit reason to falter yet; the laughter that had had the three of them doubled over with tears in their eyes as though the rest of the world did not exist, as though the choices they were making would never catch up to them. 

Every moment before the war and before the irrevocable allegiances they’d made, was etched in Narcissa’s memory; engraved into her soul even if she could not recall each moment quite as well as she’d have liked to because those moments, those days, those  _ boys _ , had shaped her into who she was today; had shaped her and had held her up even after she’d thought them forever lost. 

The pain, but most of all the devastatingly strong feeling of guilt that had torn her apart this war, that had destroyed any faith she’d had in her own strength and aspirations the moment Draco had been made to take that very same damned tattoo, had marked itself a part of her all the same. The guilt wasn’t etched into her memory, nor engraved in her soul; it was a memory she so desperately wished she could go back to and undo that the savage-like pain of it had carved itself into her very being until she felt it consumed everything she was; everything she might ever be. 

She’d failed him. 

How would she ever forgive herself for that?

“Yes,” Narcissa whispered at last, opening her eyes with more effort than she had deemed possible for such a small act. Doomed. There was no other way to describe them, any of them, besides her son. Their son, she corrected herself as though Bastan could read her mind. Draco. Their son. 

“We’re doomed,” she continued slowly, and though her words were heavy she did not feel their weight because had she not accepted them the very day Lucius’ mark had returned in all its ravaged glory? She’d accepted the possibility that had seemed larger than life then and only growing in size even now with ease, because she had accepted with it that she would forsake everything she was and everything she knew and everything and everyone around them for  _ him _ . For Draco. 

It would never make up for her failure to protect him from this war, the madman they were sworn to, or the mark burning against skin that was far too young to carry such darkness, but it was all she needed to do; all she could give him. A life after this war. 

“We’re doomed,” Narcissa repeated, and she kissed Rabastan with closed lips but a pressing urgency as though she was confiding in him a deeply hidden secret when truly it was the only obvious truth there was in her life. “We’ve always been doomed, from the day you and Dolphus took the bloody dark mark. But  _ he  _ does not have to be.”

If Bastan wanted to argue with her, he quickly realised that to do so would both be futile and risk any chance he had to remain on Narcissa’s favourable side. He only nodded, his still mildly erratic breathing warm against her lips, and kissed her a second time. “He’s not like us, love,” he muttered, and Narcissa didn’t care if he was only telling her what she wanted, needed to hear; as long as he was telling it so convincingly she almost found herself believing her own words repeated back at her. 

“You always tried so hard to keep us safe,” he continued, even though Narcissa didn’t need the reminder to know that. She had, for so long after the twins’ parents had been so tragically and brutally and far too early murdered, and she had failed then as she had failed with Draco now. “I don’t want to know what would have become of us if you hadn’t been there, holding us up by a thread. The boy— our boy, Cissa… He’s not like us. He can be saved, and you’ll be the one to do it.”

She hoped she knew him well enough to not let it be her own wishful thinking that made her consider his statement genuine, truthful, and exactly what she’d needed. 

Narcissa didn’t respond with words; she nodded silently and laid down beside Bastan, her fingers trailing across the inside of his hand up his wrist until they stilled at that Salazar forsaken mark. She hated it with all she had. 

“I love you,” was all she told Rabastan. A declaration of love filled with childhood wonders and memories she’d never get back, with regret and hope and misery and the brightest days of her life when all she’d known was joy and friendship and love; truthful and genuine and as beautifully tragic as anything could be in times like these. “I’ve always loved you.”

Bastan looked up at her, and in among the sadness and adoration that mingled in that look, Narcissa thought she saw something else: defiance. “I love you, too.”    
  
If only that was enough. 

**Author's Note:**

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